"Stay-cation"

Our kids were off track this month and instead of taking a vacation, we decided to save a few bucks and stick around town and have a "stay-cation." On Thursday our first stop was Kangaroo Zoo. The kids had a great time bouncing and running and jumping to their heart's content. My favorite part was that there were separate activities for the younger kids to do so they didn't get knocked over by the big kids. We ended up having the place to ourselves until after lunch time, it was great!!


Next stop was The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but their exhibits were great. The kids really enjoyed it! They even had a stingray exhibit where you could actually touch them. Les and Cody were the only ones to brave that, but Kenzie tried it with the help/coercion of her dad!!

We went to The Mayan that night for dinner where we enjoyed a great show and yummy food, it was way fun!!

Unfortunately, Thursday night 4/6 of us ended up with a stomach bug and Friday was spent laying around the house getting better. Les made us some wonderful chicken noodle soup and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one) that night and had about as good of time as we could hope for.


By Saturday morning all was well with the stomachs again, so we headed down to Thanksgiving Point and went to the dinosaur museum. We had never been there before and I was pretty impressed. The kids had a great time. I think the favorite was the sand/water table. We also watched a 3D movie about dinosaurs that was pretty cool. Also, while in Lehi we checked out Cabela's and ran into my mom and dad. The kids thought that was great and they actually wanted to head home with them, but we talked them out of it so we could take them out to dinner. We went to Tucano's at Gateway and had an excellent dinner! That night we watched the second Pirate's movie and called it a day!



Next up was the Hogle Zoo. The weather was perfect and there was hardly anybody there, it was wonderful!! Of course we got the traditional pose with the gorilla photos, gotta love them!! We had a great time. After a very long day there, we went to PF Chang's for dinner and had some excellent food, although one of the dishes suggested by our waiter was a bit spicy for our taste! We ended the day with the final Pirate's movie and that ended our weekend of fun!!

I'm so glad we decided to do this. It's funny how you can completely ignore all of the fun things to do around your house and take expensive vacations elsewhere. I'm sure we could do this kind of "vacation" several more times and still not run out of things to do.

I've been tagged

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:

Living in Washington Terrace in our third apartment
Raising a 2-year-old
Just found out I was going to have another baby
Loving being a stay-at-home mom
Scrapbooking my little heart out

5 things on my to do list today:

Work
Take Kenzie to dance
Fix dinner
Watch last night's American Idol
Fold laundry

5 snacks I love:

Popcorn
cheese and crackers
Chips and con queso
Gardetto's
Chocolate

5 things I would do if I was a billionaire:

Vacation more
New vehicles
New trailer
Decorate my house
New wardrobes for everybody

I tag:

Linda
Kathleen
Brooke
Christi
Eva

Kenzie's Christmas dance

Well, it's been a while since I've updated. I guess I enjoy reading other people's blogs more than updating my own.

Kenzie had her Christmas recitals for dance and tumbling this last week which were really fun to watch. She did tumbling on Monday, jazz on Wednesday, and ballet on Saturday. Most of our pictures didn't turn out too well because of the movement, but here's a sampling. She's turning into such a pretty dancer!!

Back to the land of computers

It's so funny how much I rely on my computer nowadays. It used to be that the computer was something I played Solitaire on once in a while and now it has turned into something that I use on a daily basis for something or other. First of all, I work at home doing medical transcription, so I use it for work, I read the news online rather than watch it, I check the sale ads on Pinching Your Pennies rather than read the actual sale papers, and then of course there's Facebook, blogs, and e-mail to keep up on.

So, for the past week I have been unable to be on a computer at all because of a nasty virus. It hit my computer last Sunday while I was working (I guess that's a sign I shouldn't have been working on a Sunday right:) So, we thought we could use anti-virus software to get rid of it, but not so. Les decided our safest route was to completely reformat the computer. Yikes!!! We had to order an external hard drive to back up all the files we needed and then wait for it to arrive. It came Thursday and we finally got everything set back up yesterday. It's so hard to get everything back to the way you had it before, but so far I think it's pretty good.

So, you may ask, what did I do this week without my computer? Well, I caught up on laundry, cleaned up the house, took the kids to the library, read a book, made new watchbands for my interchangeable watch, played a lot of Scrabble on my cell phone, and tried to start potty training Brooklyn.

Apparently I spend way more time on the computer than I had originally thought because I sure accomplished a lot this week!! Maybe this week will teach me to balance my time better, who knows, but I sure am glad to be back online!!!

Update on the food coloring incident

A few of you have shown some interest in whether the food coloring has come out, so here's an update. As far as the best cleaning method, just plain water and a lot of towels has worked the best. The couch looks pretty good, but there are a couple spots that still need some work. The floor is slowly coming clean, but because there was so much of it, it's taking a lot of water and a lot of blotting. I will also need to clean the entire floor once I'm done because now I have cleaner spots than the rest of the carpet. As far as the kids, they still have spots, but it's getting lighter. And the dog...well he's still looking very patriotic :) So, if this ever happens to you, just grab a bunch of water and a bunch of towels and have fun!!!

Also, I cannot say enough about microfiber couches!!! I don't think I would have had as good of luck with some other kind of fabric. Microfiber is definitely the way to go with kids around!!!

The food coloring incident

I've been told by many people that if your kids do something that you're really upset about, then just grab your camera because you'll think it's funny later on. Well, I did just that and I really do hope that I find this funny later on!!! This is what happens when the food coloring that was used the night before doesn't get put back on the highest shelf in the cupboard.

I'm not sure if you can tell exactly how much food coloring they actually got into, but it was all over them, the couch, the carpet, and the dog. Food coloring in that amount is not the easiest thing to clean and unfortunately it is an ongoing process right now. It won't come off the kids, I haven't even tried the dog and the carpet still has a slight shade of pink. The couch doesn't look too bad, but there's still more coloring coming off of it each time I wipe it down. So, if anyone has any ideas about how to get food coloring out, let me know. As of now, I will be doing research on the internet until I find something that works.

Halloween, I know I'm a little late

We really did celebrate Halloween around here, I'm just really slow about actually posting about it. We went to several parties and got lots of candy and had a great time. Les and I were party poopers this year and didn't dress up, but here are the kids costumes:

Brooklyn was a witch.

Kenzie was Hannah Montana

Kaden was a cowboy.

Cody was a hobo.